1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to software execution monitoring tools, and more particularly, to a method and system for monitoring execution behavior of a software program product in a data processing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Software execution monitoring tools are used to monitor execution behavior of program products in data processing systems. For example, a monitoring tool may identify execution errors and measure effectiveness of utilization of system resources or implementation of particular operations of software modules or application programs, among other execution behavior monitoring functions.
A trace tool is a software execution behavior monitoring tool that is primarily used for detecting execution flows in a monitored program product. Conventionally, the trace tool is a software program custom-developed for a particular program product. In operation, the trace tool keeps track of particular sequences of executable instructions in the program product by using event-based profiling techniques, which allow to log certain events as they occur or trace execution of arbitrary code segments of interest. A time-stamped record is produced for each such event, and the individual records are integrated in the tool trace report. To assure prompt interpretation, the trace reports and component individual records thereof are produced as text documents written in a non-coded (i.e., readable) human language.
For individuals skilled in the art, the trace reports allow a high degree of insight in architectural and operational features of the respective program products and may lead to an unauthorized access to such features. Therefore, attempts have been made to encode the contents of the trace reports in a manner that would not delay their interpretation by the intended party and protect the contents from an unauthorized use by third parties.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,754,890 and 6,988,263 disclose methods for protecting the trace reports directed to minimizing of an amount of diagnostics available to or accessible by the third parties. However, these references address only a few aspects of techniques for protecting information in the contents of the trace reports.
Despite considerable efforts devoted to encoding of the trace reports, their contents are still vulnerable to many third parties at ever-increasing level of sophistication. Therefore, there is a need in further improvements in techniques for monitoring execution behavior of program products in the data processing systems.